Paul C. Buff “Einstein” Lighting Test

I I bought a used Paul C. Buff “Einstein” (model E640) stu­dio strobe just before Christmas; the pack­age arrived on New Year’s Eve. So far I really like it; I’ve been try­ing dif­fer­ent set­tings, mod­i­fiers, dis­tances and so forth. I took this self-por­trait with 2 lights: the Einstein, plus an inex­pen­sive speed­light. Here’s the setup:

Subject dis­tance from both lights

≈ 8′

Key Light

Einstein is to sub­ject front & left, ~7′ up, with a 43″ sil­ver “bounce” umbrella angled at subject

Einstein is set to 5600K at ƒ/-5.0

Fill Light

Yongnuo YN 560 III is to sub­ject front & right, ~5′ up, with LumiQuest Softbox III aimed at subject

Yongnuo is set to ¹⁄₃₂ power & 24mm focal length

Camera dis­tance from subject

≈ 1 meter (3′ 3″)

Lens

Leica Tele-Elmarit-M 90mm ƒ/2.8 Nr. 11 800

ISO

160

Shutter speed

¹⁄₁₈₀ second

Aperture

ƒ/2.8

I made basic tonal adjust­ments on the image.

I don’t have a power pack or Paul C. Buff trig­gers or trans­ceivers yet, so the light was run­ning on AC power and I fired the flash with a Yongnuo trans­mit­ter and 2 Yongnuo receivers. You can read my review of the LumiQuest Softbox III here.